Nowhere is safe, not any more

November 28 2002

We have learnt a lot in the six weeks since the Bali bombing, and not all of it is bad, reports Hugh White.

We have learnt a lot since Bali. Most of it is bad news; a little of it is good. Taking the good and the bad together, we now know enough to draw some pretty clear conclusions about what Australia should be doing about our security over the coming months and years.

First the bad news. After six weeks of investigation, we now know that many of our darker fears about the nature of the Bali bombing were true. The more we have learnt, the more sinister it looks. Each element of the picture has become familiar enough, but the true significance becomes clear only when the elements are assembled and seen as a whole.

First, we know that Bali was, in a real sense, an al Qaeda operation - inspired and probably initiated by people in contact with Osama bin Laden and guided by his vision of a global campaign against the West.

We know that the bombing was undertaken by a well-developed regional network dedicated to al Qaeda's agenda. We know that they had access to significant organisational and technical expertise, and it appears also that at least one of their number was willing to commit suicide. We know this network has been active in Australia. And from Jack Roche, who was recently arrested in Perth, we hear they made a sustained attempt to develop a capacity to undertake terrorist attacks in Australia.

We have been reminded that Islam in Indonesia is a complex thing; in general more moderate than the harsher creeds of the Arab world, but still subject to the same sense of alienation from the West, and with an important role to play in Indonesia's uncertain political future. We probably understand better now that most Indonesian Muslims who would repudiate terrorism would nonetheless sympathise with some of the bombers' anger towards the West.");document.write("

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We have seen how easily our responses to Bali can fuel this hostility, for example in the angry Indonesian response to the ASIO raids in Australian cities a few weeks ago. And we must soberly recognise that if things go bad in Iraq or elsewhere, this may get worse.

We cannot yet be sure - because the evidence is mixed - whether the bombers' Australian victims were targeted because they were Australians, or because they were Westerners. But there is plenty of evidence that the Australians - we Australians - were indeed a specific target. Our strongest evidence of that comes from bin Laden himself - and thanks to his latest tape we now know that he is still alive and active.

Much of this information is not new. For some years, Australia's intelligence agencies have well understood the long-term global and regional trends underlying these developments. But what we have learnt since Bali has put all this in a new perspective.

Everything we have learnt dissuades us from thinking of Bali as an isolated event. To be precise, what we have learnt in the six weeks since Bali is that Australia must now plan on the expectation that we will be the deliberate target of a sustained campaign of terrorism, inspired by al Qaeda and undertaken or supported by regional networks with connections in Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere in our neighbourhood.

So that's the bad news. But there is some good news too, and it is important. First, the Indonesian Government and its police are running a surprisingly effective investigation. They have shown both the forensic skill and - even more importantly - the political will to find those responsible.

Second, the Indonesian authorities have been willing to work with their Australian counterparts in the investigation. The television footage of Australian Federal Police (AFP) with their Indonesian counterparts working through the towns of East Java is a remarkable testament to what has been achieved, and it has been a very welcome surprise.

Third, we have been reminded what a remarkable institution the AFP itself is. We are very fortunate that the calibre of people they have can handle not just a complex investigation but a fraught diplomatic and cultural vortex with such aplomb. Those who remember their work in East Timor will not be surprised.

Fourth, I have been greatly reassured by the handle our intelligence agencies have on the problem. The ritualistic debate about whether they missed some specific warning of the attack has distracted attention from a very focused and effective coverage of the terrorism target by our intelligence agencies.

And lastly, at the risk of sounding mawkish, I think the even tenor of our national response to the bombing itself, and to the sense of threat that has built up since, has been reassuring. We can handle this, without going over the top.

So what do we need to do? The first challenge is to make the psychological adjustment to a world in which terrorism is no longer a theoretical possibility but a practical probability. The government has been right to issue warnings. It will take a while to sink in.

This is a challenge too for our federal and state governments themselves. Their habits and processes have built up over decades during which the risk of terrorism was very low. Now they need to be replaced by a new approach that recognises a major attack as being more likely than not. A start has been made, but there is still a slightly disconcerting air of business as usual.

We need to recognise that the key instruments in the campaign against terrorism will not be our defence forces, but our intelligence agencies, police, health services, immigration authorities and many parts of the private sector. The recent debate about how our defence forces need to change is really a bit of a sideshow - a sign, more than anything else, that people have not woken up to the nature of our new situation, in which the Australian Defence Force is only a bit player.

Today the Australian Strategic Policy Institute releases its review of Australia's security after Bali, looking at all these issues in detail. For Australia none of the old security problems have gone away, but we have some challenging new ones. We need to find ways to tackle both sets of problems together.

Hugh White is director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. These are his personal views.Beyond Bali: ASPI's Strategic Assessment 2002 is available at www.aspi.org.au